Spinning the pay data

The broadcast media this morning are spinning the pay figures from Income Data Services as a sign that inflation is now driving up wages. They’ve even found some ill-informed and/or self-interested pundits to claim this is the case. As I posted yesterday, the figures don’t show this at all. There’s a very balanced report on the Financial Times site which pretty much agrees with my post yesterday. In fact, The Daily Mail has spun in completely the opposite direction to the broadcast media stating that the pay data shows that workers are “paying the price” for the credit crunch with below inflation pay rises.

You’ll also see The Daily Mail article leads on the TUC survey that 3.3 million people are not confident they can keep their jobs over the next twelve months. Non-inflationary pay rises and mass expectation of job losses and further evidence of impending recession. Must be time for an interest rate cut! Surely.